About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Reports continue to appear trying to explain the hack of the
United States Sentencing Commission last week.
A good account, with the statement from Anonymous, occurs on Zdnet,
here.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the site “ussc.gov” was not reachable. As of Jan. 26, according to zdnet, the
original IP address still showed the defaced site’s contents.

Many people feel that the DOJ was bullying Internet activist
Aaron Swartz with what amounts to a facetious prosecution. The USSC recommends sentences, and apparently
these can be used to force plea bargains.
In practice, it would take over a million dollars for a blogger to
defend himself (herself) against even a frivolous or groundless formal
indictment. Hence, the government (as
any government overseas) can maintain a chilling effect against dissent when it
wants to, even when there are constitutional protections.

I once faced a situation on 2005 where I did not pursue
possible (First Amendment based)
litigation against a school system (when I was a substitute teacher) because
there were hints of a legal theory by which I could have been prosecuted under
Virginia law, which can make it illegal to post material for an “illegal
purpose” if no legitimate “purpose” is apparent (that’s the implicit content
doctrine that I have discussed on other blogs).
However, actual prosecution would require corroborating evidence of
criminal intent from an independent source other than the website itself. That sort of technicality in interpretation
also occurs with the Second Amendment in the gun control debate. One can see my main blog July 27, 2007 for
more details.

Business Insider has another account (here) of the ussc hack. That article also links to a discussion of the 1986
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, (Wiki link )which when it was passed was motivated by the 1983 movie “War Games” – where
it’s illegal to “exceed authorized access” to an interstate computer network, a
law badly outdated in the context of the Internet and obviously open to
abuse.

Webmasters will want to review the tips at “Stop Badware”,
which are laid out pretty well among several
links here. Some of the suggests include using encrypted
file transfer procedures (I suppose the old Microsoft Front Page wouldn't be well thought of now), and making sure the computer you work from is clean,
and being wary of ad or third party networks you work with. It’s possible for a site to get “blacklisted”
by Google or other companies, but some of the warnings from website rating
services (like MyWOT) seem to be incorrect and can be triggered by certain ads
or third-party ad-ons.

It is always a good idea to use the site, do searches on it and monitor statistics (and sometimes log files) to see if activity is "normal". It is also a good idea, if you use shared hosting, to know how often your provider backs up sites. And it's a good idea to keep physical copies of the content of your site, backed up in more than one physical location (even in a bank vault), and on optical as well as magnetic media.

I had a hack of two HTML text files on an old site in 2002,
based on a discussion of nuclear weapons and Al Qaeda. A friend investigated the ISP and found that
the Unix server had left the SITE command open.
I had copies of the files and simply re-exported them, and the problem
never recurred.

Analytics

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy for billsinternetsafety.blogspot.com

If you require any more information or have any questions about my privacy policy, please feel free to contact me by email at JBoushka@aol.com.

At billsinternetsafety.blogspot.com , the privacy of my visitors is of extreme importance to me. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by billsinternetsafety.blogspot.com and how it is used.

Log Files Like many other Web sites, billsinternetsafety.blogspot.com makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Cookies and Web Beacons billsinternetsafety.blogspot.com does not use cookies.

DoubleClick DART Cookie

.:: Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on billsinternetsafety.blogspot.com .
.:: Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to billsinternetsafety.blogspot.com and other sites on the Internet.
.:: Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following link.

Some of my advertising partners may use cookies and web beacons on my site. My advertising partners include ....... Google Adsense

These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on billsinternetsafety.blogspot.com send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

billsinternetsafety.blogspot.com has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. billsinternetsafety.blogspot.com 's privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers' respective websites.